Beowulf cluster

English

WOTD – 18 August 2015

A Beowulf cluster

Etymology

So called because Beowulf is described as having þrittiges / manna mægencræft on his mundgripe (“Thirty men’s strength in his hand-grip”), approximately reflecting the number of nodes in the cluster.

Pronunciation

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Noun

Beowulf cluster (plural Beowulf clusters)

1. (computing) A cluster of standard personal computers linked by a local area network, usually on the order of 10 nodes.
   • 1999, Rajkumar Buyya, High Performance Cluster Computing: Architectures and systems‎^[1], page 641:

     One day, all of your bank and credit card transactions may be processed by Beowulf clusters.

   • 2001, A. Grado, et al., The BEOWFI Project: Reducing WFI Data with a Beowulf Cluster, IAU Commission 9 Working Group on Sky Surveys, The New Era of Wide Field Astronomy: Proceedings of a Conference, page 304,

     With the use of a beowulf cluster the time to process the large amount of data available for the BEOWFI project will be reduced, and the project will also demonstrate the effectiveness of using beowulf clusters in wide field imaging astronomy.

   • 2009, Lawrence A. Tomei, Information Communication Technologies for Enhanced Education and Learning: Advanced Applications and Developments, page number not shown:

     To this end, a Beowulf cluster is constructed, configured, and tested using 15 similar computers and 1 newer, faster server using the MPI.